Chapter 66 – Hide and Seek

“Three, two, one… Are you all hidden?” Ye Ziran covered his eyes and asked loudly.

He had spent the entire afternoon playing hide and seek with the little monkeys in the mountains, and it was finally his turn to find them.

No response.

That meant they were all hiding.

Ye Ziran dropped his hands and opened his eyes. “I’m starting to look now~”

The Monkey King Ye Ziran sprang into action, quickly using his golden eyes to pinpoint the hiding places of many little monkeys.

In a water vat.

Ye Ziran lifted the lid. “One.”

On a banyan tree.

Ye Ziran climbed up the tree. “Two.”

Under the bed.

Ye Ziran lay on the ground. “Three.”

…

Within ten minutes, Ye Ziran found nine children, who affectionately called him the “Great Demon King.”

“Boss, you’re amazing!” The children clapped around him.

Ye Ziran planted the golden hoop stick on the ground, smugly saying, “Of course, I’m Sun Wukong, no one can escape my golden eyes.”

The golden hoop stick was just an ordinary wooden stick that Ye Ziran had picked up from the ground when he was fooling around with the kids, to play the role of Sun Wukong.

“Hmm, something’s not right.” Ye Ziran counted the number of children. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, there’s still one missing.”

Wang Xiaoshu hadn’t been found yet.

“He’s hiding well.” Ye Ziran slung the golden hoop stick over his shoulder. “Little ones, I’ll be back soon. Watch me find the last little monkey.”

_

At the village chief’s house, in the kitchen, the village chief’s wife was brewing a pot of mung bean soup.

“Mom, really, we can’t do this, we’ll get caught!” Xiao Hui said anxiously. “They’re celebrities! Celebrities, you know? Very famous! If anything happens to them, the police will definitely investigate us…”

“Oh, stop talking nonsense,” the village chief’s wife dismissed it. “Those people who came before, teachers and reporters, all claimed to be so famous. Did anyone come looking for them after they disappeared?”

Xiao Hui frowned. “This is different…” It was impossible to explain, even his seemingly most fashionable mother, who had barely left the mountains a few times in her life, with the farthest place she’d ever been being the town at the foot of the mountain. Such a person would never understand what a celebrity truly represented.

She probably thought they were just like the others.

“So, tell me, is that girl pretty? Do you like her?” The village chief’s wife was referring to Yu Xiaoxiao.

Yu Xiaoxiao looked very much in line with traditional standards for choosing a daughter-in-law. The other woman seemed too seductive, and the village chief’s wife thought she was a vixen.

Xiao Hui muttered, “Y-yes, I like her…” He knew which one his mother was talking about. Frankly, he preferred Yang Yingying. Even though Yu Xiaoxiao had been more famous before, when living under the same roof, he felt every smile and frown of Yang Yingying was charming and very feminine.

But Yu Xiaoxiao wasn’t bad either. Ultimately, these women were people he had no right to approach before, each one like a celestial being.

“Well then, isn’t that enough? Would you not want such a person as your wife?” The village chief’s wife said, “You’re already twenty-four! It’s time to marry! “

Xiao Hui thought of Yu Xiaoxiao’s pure and beautiful face, murmuring, “Can I really marry someone like her…”

There were too many bachelors in the village and too few women. The men were desperate, taking anyone regardless of disability, as long as it was a woman. But Xiao Hui refused to settle.

He had dated a few girlfriends in college, but once they learned about his family’s circumstances, they immediately ran away. He could never date a girl from an ordinary family, but he also looked down on the girls in the village.

He still remembered being ridiculed by his roommates in college for not being able to afford a smartphone, and how they said he wouldn’t be able to find a girlfriend in the future.

He also remembered those roommates crazily chasing after the female star Yu Xiaoxiao, treating her as a goddess.

If, if he married Yu Xiaoxiao…

A sense of vengeance and excitement clouded Xiao Hui’s reason.

Seeing Xiao Hui’s expression, the village chief’s wife knew he was wavering. Her son had crawled out of her belly; she knew what he was thinking. She immediately said, “Give this mung bean soup to her to drink. Once it’s a done deal, do you think you won’t be able to marry her?”

Xiao Hui stared blankly at the drugged mung bean soup in the pot.

The village chief’s wife continued, “Don’t be afraid, this isn’t the first time we’ve done this. Tonight, everyone in the village will drug the men and women staying in their homes. Women, once they’ve slept together, the marriage is settled. Could those men stand up for the women? Who would go out and talk about such a shameful thing? When the time comes, let the men go and keep the women, everyone will be happy…”

Stupid and poisonous, this was filled with ignorance and flaws. Xiao Hui couldn’t possibly not know this. But thinking about his past in college where he didn’t fit in, and Yu Xiaoxiao’s beautiful face, he nodded against his better judgment.

The outside world’s prosperity could broaden one’s horizons, but the imprint of inferiority could breed jealousy, twisting one’s personality and leading to acts that disgraced education.

—Xie Chian’s words were spot on.

The decision Wang Hui made at this moment seriously disgraced the intelligence of a university student.

_

Xiao Hui suddenly remembered, “What about the three staying at Wang Xiaoshu’s house?”

Everyone in the village was in cahoots, but Wang Xiaoshu was just a lonely child, and he was never told anything. Tonight, all the outsiders would be drugged by their hosts, but there was still someone at Wang Xiaoshu’s home.

“Tsk.” The village chief’s wife waved her hand. “Just a student and two delicate pretty boys, do you think they can beat all the men in our village?”

Hearing this, Xiao Hui also felt reassured.

“What are you talking about?” Yang Yingying came to the kitchen to fetch some water and heard the mother and son talking as soon as she arrived. But she didn’t understand.

There was a communication barrier due to language.

The mother and son were startled into silence for a moment. Xiao Hui then asked, “…When did you come in?” Surely she hadn’t heard their plans…

Yang Yingying leaned against the door. “I just got here. I’m thirsty, I wanted to have some water.”

“Oh, good timing, my mom brewed mung bean soup, it’s cooling,” Xiao Hui suddenly remembered they had been speaking in dialect, and only then did he relax, nervously handing her a bowl of mung bean soup.

Yang Yingying took it and glanced at it. “Thanks.”

She turned and walked out holding the bowl.

Back in her room, Yang Yingying put the mung bean soup on the table without drinking it. She was allergic to mung beans and didn’t want to be picky in someone else’s home.

She needed to find water to drink elsewhere.

_

Ye Ziran crawled into a cellar of a house.

“Wang Xiaoshu sure knows how to hide…” Ye Ziran muttered, using the faint light from his phone screen to illuminate his way. There was no cell signal in the mountains, but it came in handy at this moment.

Suddenly, he heard a faint movement in the corner, and a small figure curled up there.

“I found you, little monkey!” Ye Ziran exclaimed, shining the phone screen in that direction.

In the next second, the golden hoop stick fell from his hand to the ground.

It was a boy around ten years old, with a refined and handsome appearance. His skin was fair, and although his clothes were dirty, they were designer brands, indicating he wasn’t a child from this mountain village.

The boy was tied up, tethered to a water pipe. His mouth was gagged with a piece of cloth, and his eyes were red from crying.

Goodness, he had stumbled into a kidnapper’s cellar.

Ye Ziran quickly went over and removed the cloth from the boy’s mouth. Surprisingly, the boy remained relatively calm, not screaming and attracting attention.

He sniffled and quietly asked Ye Ziran, “Were you kidnapped too? How did you escape?” He could tell Ye Ziran wasn’t a local child either.

The boy’s Mandarin accent sounded like he was from Beijing, Ye Ziran was stunned for a moment, and asked in Beijing dialect, “You were kidnapped?”

Hearing his hometown dialect, the boy excitedly nodded. “Yeah!”

Ye Ziran placed his phone on the ground, using the dim light to untie the boy. “What’s your name? How did you get caught?”

The boy replied, “Xiao Ye.”

Ye Ziran: “Snack? Your name is even more food-related than mine. My name is Ye Ziran.”

Xiao Ye: “…When I was out playing with my parents and got separated, someone brought me here.”

Ye Ziran untied Xiao Ye’s ropes, and Xiao Ye rubbed his wrists that had turned red from being bound. Suddenly, his expression changed. “Watch out behind you!”

The phone screen was lit up, and Ye Ziran had already seen the shadow on the wall. A tall man stood behind him, raising his hand to strike.

Ye Ziran immediately hooked the golden hoop stick on the ground with his foot, grabbed it, and spun and leaped. “Take this blow from your Grandpa Sun!”

Bang!

The blow struck the forehead, and the towering villager’s eyes rolled back as he fell straight to the ground, unconscious.

Xiao Ye: “Wow, that’s amazing.”

Ye Ziran grabbed him. “Let’s get out of here quickly!”

_

Jiang Heng and Shen Fubai met Xie Chian by a small stream.

The teenager showed no emotion upon seeing them, merely gazing at the sky.

Shen Fubai asked, “What are you looking at?”

Xie Chian lowered his head and looked at his reflection in the clear stream. “Since you’re all from the same production team, the police won’t ignore it. If the people coming to meet you act promptly, according to the time, a police car will arrive in an hour.”

Considering the time, it was roughly that moment.

Jiang Heng asked, “Where did you go last night?” They had previously assumed Xie Chian went out last night to catch a pheasant for breakfast today, but it now seemed that wasn’t entirely true.

Xie Chian’s conversation with them was interrupted at noon, and then he disappeared.

“You’ve met Li Wenxiu, she should have already told you everything. You are her hope,” Xie Chian said. “Many of the boys here were kidnapped from a young age and have forgotten their memories of their original families. They recently only captured one boy, and I haven’t found where they’re hiding him yet.”

“But I found these.” Xie Chian pulled out a white piece of paper from his pocket, on which was a diagram of the village. “The places marked with circles are possible locations where abducted women might be hidden.”

Over the past two days, he stayed in the mountains to investigate these matters. If the production team hadn’t come, Xie Chian would have gathered evidence and escaped on his own, then alerted the police to rescue those people. But with the arrival of the production team, things undoubtedly became much easier.

Looking at the extremely detailed map, Shen Fubai suddenly remembered that when he first met Xie Chian, the teenager had been scribbling on a piece of paper… Xie Chian had noticed the abnormality here long ago.

“Did Li Wenxiu tell you this too?” Shen Fubai found it incredible. Such keen insight, such astonishing calmness and courage.

Xie Chian was terrifyingly capable.

“No. She probably only wants us to leave safely. She doesn’t think four students can do anything, so she didn’t tell us anything,” Xie Chian said indifferently.

Jiang Heng said, “So, you deduced it all yourself. Based on the level of detail in this map you drew, you almost immediately sensed something was amiss upon entering the mountain village. You went out last night to confirm the locations where those women were hidden.”

“As I said, it takes only two hours to discover the abnormalities here.” Xie Chian turned his head. “We have one hour left, and it will be past dinner time by then.”

Xie Chian’s tone was unflinching. “I guess the villagers can’t hold back anymore. They will likely make a move during dinner. Have you figured out how to warn your companions?”

“Not yet.” Shen Fubai looked at him seriously. “Before that, I’m also curious about one question, please answer me.”

Xie Chian: “Hmm?”

Shen Fubai said solemnly, “How did you knock out a chicken with a grain of rice?” This was too unscientific. He had been curious about it for a whole day, and he had to know the answer.

Xie Chian: “…”